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Strange, Strange Font Problem (Outlook)

Office 2003

I've got a WIERD one to throw at you guys this morning. I'm absolutely baffled and at a dead end. Several of the techs here, including my supervisor, have all tried to help me on this, and we just can't resolve the issue -- mainly because it makes not a lick of sense!

One of our clients is using Office 2003, and in his Outlook, he has a signature and V-card he uses. Emails default to HTML, and uses Outlook's own discretion to decide which format to send email in for each recepient. The same sig/v-card configuration is used for both new messages and replies/forwards. It's supposed to look something like this:

Sender's NameSender's TitleCompany Name
Address Info
Telephone Info

All lines are done ini Arial, as in the example above. Also, the default font for messages is Arial.

Except now, when he writes a new message, suddenly it looks like this:

Sender's NameSender's TitleCompany Name
Address Info
Telephone Info

The first line is in Times New Roman all of a sudden. Default font for new messages is Arial, font for sig is Arial...so where did Times New Roman come from?!

Try to reply/forward, and all sorts of crap starts changing depending on the the message being replied to/forwarded. Font changes, font size changes, bold/itallics change -- it just varies from one moment to the next.

So I've tried all sorts of stuff. I've tried removing Word as the editor -- no luck. Tried changing all messages to plain text -- only fixes the problem for new messages, not replies/forwards. At least with using plain text, when it changes the font, it changes the font for the whole sig, so at least it's uniformly screwed up -- but even still, the font's still changing on its own despite it being configured to plain text.

Here's a really wierd example. In one case, I tried doing a forward of a message in his inbox, and suddenly the sig changed to look like this:

Sender's NameSender's TitleCompany Name
Address Info
Telephone Info

The first line hasn't changed this time, but the SECOND has changed to Times New Roman. All lines before and after it are still Arial. It's almost as if Outlook is randomly choosing lines and changing the font. So I figured since it's a forward of an existing message, perhaps the formatting of the original message caused the problem -- checked, and the original message was written in Tahoma...so where in the world did Times New Roman come from?

Is there anyway to explain all this? Any solution so that I can get this guy's signature all in one font across the board?

I don't know the answer, but what I would do next is go into your fonts file and rename Times New Roman, then run your tests again. That could well provoke an error message that will at least tell you what is trying to do the change?

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

Try to reply/forward, and all sorts of crap starts changing depending on the the message being replied to/forwarded. Font changes, font size changes, bold/itallics change -- it just varies from one moment to the next.

It is the inconsistency that baffles me. If it were just a setting that had been changed, it should stay that way IMO?

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

try this: change the settings to the way you want them in options then press apply and ok. now before you do anything else CLOSE outlook and re-open it. the purpose of this is just to see if the settings stay the way you want them to stay. other than that I really have no suggestions other than what has already been provided. if that doesnt fix it you may have to OEM it to M$. goodluck.

My wife seems to recall some sort of problem with RTF and e-mail but cannot remember if it was regular (Office) or Express?

Wort a try perhaps?

If you cannot do someone any good: don't do them any harm....
As long as you did this to one of these, the least of my little ones............you did it unto Me.
What profiteth a man if he gains the entire World at the expense of his immortal soul?

You might want to open up Word by itself when Outlook is not open.
Start typing and find out which font it is using.My money says: Times New Roman, because that is Word's default font.

What has happened is Times New Roman has inserted itself to the first line of your signature because of a previous setting of having Word as your Email Editor. The reason it's now your second line is because you screwed with it.

Now to get rid of it and to resolve this issue (since I'm not there to mess with it):

I would delete Word's normal.dot file, then I would restart Word which will recreate it. Then inside Word change the default font to Arial. Exit Word, reenter Word and check the default font. Is it now totally Arial?

If the Word default font is Arial, the go back in Outlook and check if it's solved.

If not, recreate the signature card and Vcard from a cut and paste job off a document that only contains Arial.
I noticed in Outlook 2003, the signature editor starts in Times New Roman (You can find this editor by opening a NEW email message, clicking the down arrow next to the word OPTION, then choose Email Signature. Highlight everything in each signature and delete it (so it deletes even stuff that you might not see), recreate the signature line, select all text, change the font and size, then choose replace button.

If not then, ensure all Outlook fonts are set to Arial and change the stationary font option to "Always use my fonts".

Finally got an update on this....Looks like you were right ZT -- I couldn't find the normal.dot file, but just opening Word, changing default font to Arial, then going into Outlook fixed the problem. Thanks!!

1) If your document already contains text formatted with the properties you want to use, select that text. On the Format menu, click Font. Select the options you want to apply to the default font.

(Remember that default is a predefined setting. You can accept the default option settings, or you can change them to suit your own preferences.)

If you selected text in step 1, the properties you want will appear in the dialog box.
Click Default. Any new document you open will use the font settings you selected.

Note: The default font applies to new documents based on the active template.
(A template contains the structure and tools for shaping such elements as the style and page layout of finished files. For example, Word templates can shape a single document, and FrontPage templates can shape an entire Web site.).